A Mega Thanksgiving for the E-commerce Industry

28 November, 2017

Black Friday, post the quiet and peaceful Thanksgiving dinner has always traditionally been seen as the day that marks the start of the holiday sales season. This was the day that saw prices being slashed to extremely cut throat and discounted levels by all the major retailers. This has all, however, changed with the onset of Amazon and other players in the e-commerce space.

This year has kicked off in a much grander fashion as compared to the previous years for the e-commerce giants. This year, Black Friday has seen the e-commerce industry post record numbers in sales.

Numbers from both IBM and Adobe, the two companies that track maximum of the traffic to a swarthe of e-commerceplayers, state that the current year's numbers are higher compared to the previous year.

Adobe Inc., the company that supposedly manages eighty percent of the traffic to the top one hundred online retailers and marketplaces in the United States pegs the sales to have grown 16.2 percent year on year.

The total online sales transaction value till 2 PM Pacific Time stood at a healthy 1.52 million USD on Thanksgiving Day. A mammoth portion of the pie was occupied by smartphone slaves with numbers as high as forty six percent being quoted. Last year, i.e., 2016 saw the total e-commerce sales at 1.93 Billion USD for the Thanksgiving period.

The 16.3 percent increment seen this year mirrors the behaviour seen from the start of November till the 22nd. November 1 to November 22 this year have seen a 17.3 percent increase in sales. All of the twenty two days have seen online sales higher than one billion USD in value.

These high values represent the confidence that the consumers have placed on the e-commerce players. The companies are also starting their promotions early-on off late has also been one of the key factors contributing to the higher sales figures.

The fact that many of the physical stores remain closed on Thanksgiving Day, i.e., Thursday or open up for sometime in the wee evening hours, is what is being taken advantage of by the e-commerce businesses.

The primary reason that these businesses have started their sales on Thursday itself instead of the traditional Friday is because most of the Americans are home on Thanksgiving Day, so might as well get them started on their winter shopping aided with extremely lucrative deals.

Adobe states that this year's average order value per customer on pre-Thanksgiving Day have fallen a tad bit to 132 USD as compared to 137 USD last year. IBM’s Bluemix Analytics platform, however , pegs this year's average order value per customer to be a bit more low at 114 USD.

One reason for the decline in average order value is the laying on of more discounts as the day goes on. This does translate to a higher gross revenue but lower net profit.